A Self, Authentic Beyond Reason
Author: Bianca Moeschinger
July 2025
There are moments in life when a single question rearranges everything.
Not because it gives us an answer — but because it reminds us that the answer must be lived.
This is a reflection born from one of those questions.
There’s a deep desire that has lived inside me for as long as I can remember — the desire to understand myself completely. To feel myself. To inhabit myself. To live inside the totality of this human experience with eyes wide open and soul fully present.
It’s not just a curiosity. It’s the very thing that keeps me going.
Recently, someone said to me:
“I can't live without knowing, feeling, and inhabiting myself. Would you know what I mean by ‘a self, authentic beyond reason’?”
I paused. Their words touched something. Something so familiar and yet difficult to define.
I had to sit with it — not just with the question, but with the feeling beneath it.
Because words like these, while seemingly simple, carry layers that often get lost in our interpretations. They ask us to listen deeper.
And when I did, I found my own echo there — the same need to understand my purest nature, the soul’s interpretation of what it means to be human inside this body, this identity, this history.
To truly understand the self, I’ve had to trace where that self comes from...
The Human Inheritance
This body is not just a vessel for experience, but a map of it — shaped over time by both conscious choice and unconscious inheritance.
This body I live in — it carries stories.
Not just mine, but those of my parents. And theirs.
My psyche, my reflexes, even my pain — all shaped by a lineage of choices, traumas, hopes, and survival.
I identify with all of it.
And I also choose from it.
Consciously and unconsciously, I select which parts of that inheritance I want to embrace and which I long to release. Some I love. Some I resist. Some I don’t even understand yet. But from that dance of choosing and rejecting, I’ve formed this current version of me — the self that lives, works, speaks, serves, and sometimes hides.
Sometimes I want to be seen and known. Other times, I want to disappear, quietly unravelling in the corners of my own existence.
And now, with time and tenderness, I’ve arrived at a place I can only describe as actualisation.
The Dance of Actualisation
Here, I look at my stories, my emotions, and my behavioural patterns not with judgement, but with curiosity. I notice my triggers. I allow their loops to run their course. And when I land, there I am again — deeper, clearer, and more available to life.
Do I still get stuck? Of course.
But not for long.
And not without awareness.
So when he said, “I can’t live without knowing, feeling, and inhabiting myself,” I understood.
I realised: the closest relationship I will ever have is with myself.
I am my own soul mate.
I am the one I must answer to.
The one who lives with my guilt, shame, longing, joy, rage, and return.
Everyone else is simply a mirror.
A fellow traveller.
A witness.
Sometimes a guide. Sometimes a trigger.
But always — a reflection.
Still, his words stayed with me — especially that final phrase. It lingered like a koan.
- A koan, in Zen Buddhist practice, is a paradoxical question or statement — one that cannot be answered by logic or intellect alone. Its purpose is to disrupt ordinary thinking and invite a deeper, more intuitive knowing. That phrase — a self, authentic beyond reason — stayed with me in just this way, asking to be felt, not solved.
Form, Focus, and the Shaping of Self
Form is always being created. Even in the absence of conscious intention, the body shapes itself around feeling, experience, and energy. But when form is paired with focus — with a reason, a direction, a deeper will — that’s when true power enters.
The body, the face, the hands and feet — they all begin to reflect this inner direction. The shape we take becomes the expression of what we have chosen, consciously or not, to become. This shaping can emerge from desire, from purpose, from need, from survival — or even from the unconscious pull of our lineage and conditioning.
Much of it happens before we’re aware. In fact, the way we are shaped and the way we respond to life is, at first, almost entirely unconscious. Until it’s not. And in that moment of awareness, we may look at what we've created — our posture, our habits, our choices — and feel the shock of realisation: this is me. But it wasn’t chosen. Not fully.
That’s the nature of early life — innocent, unguarded, exploratory. With few boundaries, we play, we imitate, we become. Then we feel pain. Loss. Rejection. The body adapts. The nervous system tightens. Autonomic responses like fear, flight, or fight become etched into our form. And over time, that becomes our reason — the justification for why we are the way we are.
But reason doesn’t have to be reactive. It can be reclaimed. When we meet our form with awareness, we begin the alchemical process of reshaping not just how we move — but who we are.
What Is Reason, Anyway?
And that question:
“Would you know what I mean by a self, authentic beyond reason?”
Yes. I think I do.
To be authentic beyond reason is to be whole beyond explanation.
It’s to know and feel yourself at a level that transcends analysis, justification, or performance.
It’s not about being rational, or relatable, or polished.
It’s about being true.
True, even when no one understands.
True, even when it doesn’t make sense.
True, even when it’s messy, illogical, uncomfortable, or unexplainable.
It’s a frequency — not a thought.
A being — not a brand.
And perhaps, it is this kind of authenticity that the soul is really here for.
So yes — I believe I know what it means to be “a self, authentic beyond reason.”
And yet, I also know I am still discovering her.
Each day, each moment of honesty, each unraveling breath… brings me closer.
And if your current form — physical, emotional, or behavioural — doesn’t yet reflect the self you long to inhabit, know that the moment you become aware is the moment you begin again.
Reflective Prompt
What parts of your self feel inherited?
Which parts feel chosen?
And what might it mean for you to live a life that is authentic beyond reason?
You can also listen to this episode on the Under the Silence podcast:
